52 Films By Women: Xena: Warrior Princess-Here She Comes...Miss Amphipolis (1997)

The Mary Sue

By Andrea Thompson

Note: Some spoilers ahead.

I’m cheating a bit for this week’s column, since I’m writing about a TV episode rather than a film. But hell, it’s Pride Month, “Pose” has recently ended, and the episode I’m focusing on was not only directed and written by women, it has a fantastic origin story.

But, as is habitual with me, I’m getting ahead of myself. Like many, I’ve turned to fun, light-hearted content during the pandemic, some new, some rediscovered. One example of the latter has been “Xena: Warrior Princess,” a show which I enjoyed whenever I could catch it (ah, life before streaming) and have likewise enjoyed revisiting. If you’re somehow unfamiliar with the premise, it was set in a fantasy version of ancient Greece and followed the titular character Xena, (Lucy Lawless) a former warlord who chose to fight for good in an effort to atone for her past. On her journey to redemption, she was aided by a farm girl named Gabrielle (Renée O'Connor), who became her conscience, friend, fellow warrior, and eventually, far more, even if it couldn’t become official canon at the time, although it was clear enough to the ardent fan base it garnered during its six season run from 1995 to 2001.

One episode in particular was one of those completely random watches I enjoyed as a teenager, and ended up being one of those childhood gems that’s even better once you can really appreciate what it was doing. Granted, there are many episodes of “Xena” that fit this description (and to be fair, some that don’t), but the one I’m singling out is the season two episode “Here She Comes...Miss Amphipolis,” which aired in 1997. 

As the title suggests, it revolves around a beauty pageant, but in typical Xena fashion, there are higher stakes than just determining a winner. A fragile peace has been in place in the unnamed setting for about a year, but that peace may soon be shattered. All three of the warlords who previously waged war on the battlefield are now basically fighting by proxy, with each having entered their respective girlfriends as contestants. Now someone has been attempting to not only sabotage each contestant’s chances of winning but do away with them completely, which would kick off another war.

Xena and Gabrielle aren’t shy about sharing their thoughts on beauty pageants and how degrading they can be, but as Xena points out, “War makes everyone a victim.” So she decides to pose as a contestant for the title of...Miss Known World (not making that up), with Gabrielle adopting another kind of disguise, complete with a hilarious accent, as her sponsor.

And what happens next is surprisingly complicated, far ahead of its time, and in many ways, our current time. But perhaps the biggest relief is how this episode avoids the most tired cliche of all - the “tough girl” struggling to perform traditional femininity. Xena sees no conflict between her warrior skills and the demands of a contestant, gamely donning a blonde wig and various costumes. She not only performs her part to perfection, she WORKS IT as a blonde bombshell. To her, it’s just another adventure, and this one happens to demand this particular set of skills, some no doubt inspired by Lawless, a former beauty queen herself. It’s what I refer to as the “Clueless” brand of satire, which maintains a respect for the characters they’re portraying even as they’re poking fun at them.

So it makes sense that the other contestants are far different from the “underdressed, over-developed bimbos” Xena was expecting. As the episode reminds us, all of them have seen the horrors of war up close, and it’s given them the kind of perspective that makes it impossible for them to take such frivolities seriously. As one contestant puts it, “You can’t know how stupid something like this seems when you’ve been through a war where it was a fight just to survive.” It’s what they stand to gain that get them invested in winning rather than the pageant itself, with one contestant being promised food for her village, another hoping to find another life far away from the trauma she’s endured, and one believing she has so little right to her own feelings she’s chosen to go along with her sponsor/boyfriend’s decision to enter her in the pageant.

Only one contestant is actually invested in the pageant itself, and that is Miss Artiphys, which is when the episode really gets interesting. Yes the name is pronounced artifice, and Xena quickly discovers they weren’t born a woman. In fact, Miss Artiphys was played by Karen Dior, a bisexual adult film star who was a female impersonator, then moved into more mainstream roles in the 90’s, and from what I could discover, apparently identified as a man rather than a trans woman. Given that information, I will use he pronouns when referring to Dior, and they when referring to the character of Miss Artiphys.

The character of Miss Artiphys not only isn’t a joke, but is treated with dignity. When they lock Xena in a steam room, it’s not out of a sense of competition, but out of fear that Xena will reveal their secret. As Miss Artiphys struggles to explain their reasons for joining the competition to Xena, they point out that Xena was born a woman and can take her identity for granted, while for them, “This is a chance to use a part of me most people usually laugh at or worse. The part I usually have to hide. Only here that part works for me.” Xena doesn’t pretend to fully understand, but she not only listens to Miss Artiphys, she refuses to out them and says, “May the best person win.”

How was such respect possible at a time when trans (or in this case, trans implied) characters were nonexistent, or when they were acknowledged, were generally treated as jokes at best, or violent killers at worst? That’s probably due to writer Chris Manheim, who was inspired to create the character of Miss Artiphys by her brother Keith Walsh, who apparently died of AIDS in 1992, and was also a regular drag performer. 

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For Miss Artiphys, the pageant is genuinely empowering, and it’s easy to see their arc as Manheim’s wish fulfillment for her brother. Miss Artiphys not only steals the show (no small achievement when you’re standing next to Lawless), they get the best moments. They not only appear onstage in Xena’s signature costume and proclaim, “Honey, I’m no princess. I’m a queen,” they also get to (spoiler!) win the pageant. All the other finalists proudly declare their agency and decide to drop out of a competition that’s based on their objectification, leaving Miss Artiphys as the winner to raucous applause and tears that were probably genuine on their part. 

Such dreams were rarely fulfilled in real life at the time. Karen Dior never found mainstream stardom and died of AIDS-related complications in 2004. Manheim had long been a prolific TV writer and continued to not only write but produce several “Xena” episodes, but her last IMDB credits is as a writer of an episode of “Monk” in 2004. This was also the last director credit for Marina Sargenti, who also directed the underrated 1990 horror film “Mirror Mirror.” 

No, pop culture as a whole wasn’t prepared to follow the example set by “Xena” at the time, even if Lucy Lawless and Renée O'Connor embraced their status as queer icons long before it became trendy or just good PR. Nevertheless, “Here She Comes... Miss Amphipolis” sums up the show’s legacy nicely, and in a fashion that much of the mainstream is still struggling to catch up to. Or as Xena herself quite simply puts it, “Beauty is beauty.” Indeed it is.

52 Films By Women: The Watermelon Woman (1996)

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By Andrea Thompson

To watch Cheryl Dunye's 1996 masterpiece “The Watermelon Woman” is to notice something new and engaging every time. Cheryl Dunye, who was the first Black lesbian to direct a film, also wrote, edited, and plays the lead, but if there's a further thing from a vanity picture, then I don't know it. In fact, the first time I watched it, I had no idea so much of it was fiction.

Even if you knew nothing about the background of “The Watermelon Woman,” it's clearly a very personal film. Dunye even plays a fictionalized version of herself, an aspiring filmmaker who documents her search for an actress who played a number of stereotypical 'mammy' roles in the 1930s and was mostly credited as 'The Watermelon Woman.' As Cheryl delves deeper into The Watermelon Woman's history, she discovers her name was Fae Richards (Lisa Marie Bronson) and that she was also “in the family,” aka queer.

Just how Cheryl goes about this research in a pre-Internet world is only one of the many, many ways this film sends out the serious 90s vibes. Well, that and the outfits, especially what some people thought were so damn edgy. Cheryl not only uses human sources (such as her own mother, who basically plays herself) for much of her information, she actually works in a video store, complete with actual VHS tapes to rent. It's enough to bring early Tarantino to mind, a filmmaker who was also known for working in a video store and made a film led by a Black woman the following year.

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Needless to say, the similarities pretty much end there. While Tarantino has gone on to have a big enough career to be able to bitch and moan about how cruel the industry is to old white men, Cheryl Dunye's work is lesser-known, shall we say, although more recently she's become rediscovered enough for “The Watermelon Woman” to get a 20th anniversary restoration and a theatrical rerelease, and for Dunye herself to become a prolific TV director. This is in spite of her film not only including elements that have only become mainstream relatively recently, from the film's genre, which is a kind of meta docu-fiction, to the many issues she raises, from white feminism to the erasure of Black history.

“The Watermelon Woman” is meta on a level few films have been able to pull off. Dunye ended up having to create much of the limited history her fictional counterpart is able to discover, which in reality was either nonexistent or beyond the film's budget. Cheryl's own involvement with Diana (Guinevere Turner), a white patron at the video store, also begins around the time she discovers Fae was romantically involved with Martha Page, a white woman who directed many of the films Richards acted in, and who was played by Dunye's real-life partner at the time, Alexandra Juhasz.

Cheryl's own disillusionment with Diana also parallels a few revelations about the nature of Fae and Martha's relationship, much of which acts a brutal rebuke of white feminism, with many of the white women ranging from racist to well-meaning, or just outright tone-deaf. That said, Diana and Cheryl's involvement is the reason for one of the best lesbian sex scenes ever filmed, even if it did cause a backlash that involved criticism of the funding it received from the National Endowment of the Arts. Hell, Cheryl even gets harassed by the police in one scene, who refuse to believe she didn't steal the camera she's using to film, and even call her boy. This kind of behavior is apparently so normal to her that the film never even mentions it again.

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The more Cheryl discovers about Fae, the more “The Watermelon Woman” becomes a moving tribute to those history ignored or actively silenced. In such cases, the film is very aware that the lives of the people who did manage to create will always be a mystery to a certain extent, but the film refuses to reduce any of its subjects to mere victims, with footage of Fae and June (Cheryl Clarke), the woman who became the Fae's great love, that speaks of a happy life lived in spite of dreams which remained forever deferred.

52 Films By Women: Guinevere (1999)

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By Andrea Thompson

The story “Guinevere” tells has been done to death, hasn't it? I mean, don't we all know how it goes? An innocent young ingenue forms a relationship with a much older man, and she becomes his muse while also being mentored by him, which allows her to blossom creatively as well.

Yet to watch “Guinevere” is to see far more. It's partly due to writer and director Audrey Wells, who was still in the beginning of her career when she made her directorial debut with this film in 1999. But the main one is probably lead Sarah Polley, who is remarkable as 21-year-old Harper Sloane, who meets the much older bohemian photographer Connie (Stephen Rea) at her sister's wedding.

Actually, Connie notices Harper far before he approaches her, snapping a photo of the awkward young woman as she's doing her best to appear anything but. She's a daughter of privilege who is bound for Harvard, per the expectations of her family, who are part of a long tradition of legal sharks. Privilege may be wasted on the privileged, but once Harper follows Connie into his world, which is populated by a vast array of artists, the conservative atmosphere of her family life becomes more stifling than ever.

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Connie also constantly asks Harper for her opinion, firmly believes she has the potential to be a great artist, and insists on sleeping on the floor of his darkroom when she spends the night in his loft. So when Harper tries to insist Connie is too old for her, her friend Patty (Carrie Preston) knows better, and so do we. The affair they quickly start is a given, as are the difficulties inherent in it. Harper attempts to retreat back to her family, but since Connie is the only entry point for a more free-spirited environment she doesn't have the confidence or connections to explore on her own, she quickly returns to him when he shows up asking for her forgiveness. That he also manages to throw her a killer 21st birthday party is the kicker.

By then, both we and Harper are aware she is one in a long line of young women Connie has dated, all of whom he refers to as Guinevere. But he also genuinely tries to help them, insisting that they work, which to him means studying, learning, and creating, whether it happens to be through photography, writing, painting, or some other artistic endeavor. Connie desperately wants to be honest, but his deceptions are unavoidable due to the fact that he's just as desperate to believe he's not the same as, say, another older man who gives him a smirking thumbs up while he's sitting with a much younger blonde. It's even worse than other reactions the two of them tend to inspire, which can be summed up as variations of an eye-roll.

But it's Harper's mother Deborah (Jean Smart) who best sums up the dynamic between Connie and Harper while revealing herself to to be a society bitch in the best way. And goddamn, Jean Smart makes the most out of this small role. She had been unaware that her daughter was living with Connie, and once she finds out, she has no problem letting her feelings be known to them both. Not only does she ask Connie outright what he has against women his own age, she refuses to let him bullshit his way out of the answer. She also knows that his preference for the barely legal is due to far more than just their bodies, even if that's the easy answer.

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“I know exactly what she has that I haven't got,” Deborah says to Connie as she smokes her cigarette so stylishly it should be impossible. “Awe. That's it, isn't it? I mean, no real woman – no woman of experience, would ever stand in front of you with awe in her eyes...and say, 'Wow, look at that man. Look at that bohemian wedding photographer with holes in his jeans. Gosh, isn't he something?' No. It takes a naive girl for that. It takes Harper for that.” So effective is Smart's delivery that her character had the honor of being called not just a nasty woman, but a “terribly nasty” one by an LA Times critic, even as he acknowledged how right she was.

Harper's feelings are more complicated four years after she and Connie part ways, by which time she has become a successful photographer and he is dying from complications related to alcoholism. “He was the worst man I ever met,” she recalls. “Or maybe the best. I'm still not sure. If you're supposed to learn from your mistakes, then he was the best mistake I ever made. He was my most spectacular, and cherished fuckup.” Their relationship hurts her as much as it helps her, and her reaction is an example of one of the many ways women must forgive for the sake of their sanity. So often, this is how young women are initiated into fields which are dominated by men, who are often just as intent on satisfying their own desires as they are in assisting the vulnerable young women who happen to stumble across their path.

However, “Guinevere” acknowledges another truth, on how ultimately unsatisfying it often is for the other side of the equation – the men who do the exploiting. Connie may repeatedly get a pass to behave this way over and over again, but it leaves him unhappy and ultimately less successful. As he nears his end, he certainly gets more support than he deserves, from not just Harper, but the other women from his past who return, which include the likes of Gina Gershon and Sandra Oh, and of course, his latest bright young thing, April (Grace Una).

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Even as Harper informs the dying Connie just how much it took for her to get to a point where she could return to his side, something which wouldn't have been possible for her two or even one years ago, she is willing to give Connie a vision of his own personal heaven. In her imagination, as Connie goes down an astonishingly bright hallway, he is treated to the presence of the various women from his past, who all making individual appearances as he glides onward. At the end, a 19-year-old with a camera awaits. As she takes his picture, the flash goes off with the brightest, purest light he's ever seen. And that will be all, because in the end, what more could a man like Connie want?